From the source
Vercel is introducing Vercel Schedules, a way for agents and applications to create, change or cancel one-time and recurring schedules through code without redeploying.
- Cron jobs are defined once in code and updated by editing config and redeploying, which Vercel says no longer fits agents that interact with users as work evolves.
- Schedules builds on the static approach used by Vercel Cron Jobs but lets users and agents decide when work should happen while the application is still running.
- Static schedules keep timing in vercel.json or Build Output API configuration and sync on deploy, while dynamic schedules are managed at runtime through the JS SDK, CLI or API and support one-time and recurring work through Queue topics.
- When a task is due, Vercel uses Queues to deliver the saved request to the app, which supplies the code to check permissions and start the agent.
- Vercel Schedules is now in Public Beta, and scheduled work can be tested on Preview deployments and in custom environments before Production.
